


Generator

by LinkWorshiper



Series: Sit, Resist [5]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 19:01:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5303123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinkWorshiper/pseuds/LinkWorshiper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Intimacy takes many forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Generator

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I've ruined my schedule so much that I'm hopelessly behind on my other fic projects. But I hope this begs forgiveness. I think this might be the last entry to this little ficlet series for the time being, but we'll see.
> 
> Still written in the middle of the night and unedited.

 

When Thomas hurtled awake with jerking knees and elbows, Jimmy was already holding his hand, though it took him a few moments of blinking dazedly about until he registered it. Jimmy knelt on the floor beside his bed, his face stamped with pale freckles of starlight, his blond hair pomaded in moonbeams. “You're there,” Thomas murmured softly down at him.

“Where else would I be?” Jimmy asked, his thumb rolling across the scarred flesh of Thomas's war wound.

Thomas looked away, though he didn't snatch his hand back as he might have once done. “I don't know,” Thomas said, focusing on the touch of Jimmy's fingertips against the sensitive flesh. “Somewhere better than here, I s'pose.”

“Ain't no such place,” Jimmy assured him as he shifted his position on the floor. He was clad in his undergarments, which hung loose in the shoulder and the waist, but clung sinfully to his thighs and chest in ways that seemed both haphazard and intentionally tantalizing all at once. “I told you, Thomas: I'm here for you – any way you need me, I'm here.”

It was another ambiguous comment from Jimmy that made Thomas's heart strain between his ribs and cindered his cheeks. Despite the increase in forward affection between them, Thomas wondered if Jimmy realized what he sounded like when he said such things, and felt no less hung out to twist in the wind whenever he heard them. Yet Jimmy had still not let go of his hand, and kept it safe within his as if the scars both old and new didn't disgust him in the least. Thomas's stomach swam, bloated with self-consciousness.

“Were it another bad dream?” Jimmy asked softly, noting the way Thomas seemed to have floated away. He tugged gently on Thomas's hand until Thomas came back to him and met his eyes again.

There was a beat of hesitation, and then: “Yeah,” Thomas admitted softly, as if it were a shameful thing to confess.

“D'ya... wanna talk about it?” Jimmy carefully asked, squeezing Thomas's hand reassuringly. “I mean, only if you want to,” he added quickly as he loosened his grip.

“It's stupid,” said Thomas, his gaze distracted by the curling wisps that glistened blond just above the part in Jimmy's hair, playful and carefree. He thought the silvery moon cast Jimmy in the prettiest light, catching the pulsing rogue of his flesh and enunciating his every lovely contour with inky shadow.

“Gotta pull the bad ones out somehow, y'know,” said Jimmy with a note of solemnity. He shuffled on the floor again, this time rising to his knees so that he could clamber up onto the side of the cot beside Thomas. Not once did he allow Thomas's hand to slip free of his. He turned, facing Thomas with one foot tucked under his other thigh as he waited.

It took Thomas a few moments to feel comfortable enough to say what had upset him enough that it kicked his slumber awake. Still, he avoided looking directly at Jimmy as he spoke, still focused on his mused, yellow hair, the contour of his clavicle, which was just visible from beneath Jimmy's sagging union suit. “I dreamed you were gone,” said Thomas. “Not just gone off to London or somewhere, but  _really_ gone. Gone like you were never here at all – like somethin' I'd only ever imagined and that....”

He trailed off, his breath hitching as Jimmy held his hand tighter once more, as if to remind Thomas that it wasn't so. Thomas swallowed and dropped his gaze to their joined hands, and then pushed onward: “And that I were always alone. And I couldn't make do. And that I were dead after all.” His fresh scars began to throb, shooting an unreal pain through his wrists, and he grit his teeth in an effort to sever his shame; “Because then I wouldn't have to think about it anymore,” he managed to summarize in a low whisper.  

“I swear to you, we ain't imagined,” Jimmy murmured with equal softness, lifting Thomas's hand to kiss the knuckles as had become his habit whenever Thomas felt low. “Nothin' about any of this is imagined.”

“Happiness is,” Thomas answered plainly as he watched Jimmy's perfect mouth curve against his fingers, a stark contrast, he thought, to the ugliness of his scarred deformities. “I don't think I'll ever know what it's really like.”

“Who really can, eh?” said Jimmy against Thomas's knuckles, which made Thomas shiver despite himself. “But you only get what you're given. And we've been given –  _I've_ been given you. You and another start. So don't... don't tire of me yet, right?”

The melancholy weighing at the corners of Thomas's bowed mouth made it hard for him to do anything more than frown. “Me life is just a bunch of false dawns, stood there to be knocked over,” he said with morose sincerity, because he'd learned his misery out of repetition. “You've got a lot more to look forward to in your life than hangin' back and takin' care of me broken body and me broken mind.”

Jimmy clutched Thomas's hand tightly again, giving it a small jerk of conviction. “But I like your body,” he whispered as he let his consoling kisses fall across Thomas's blighty, then over the jutting bone of his wrist and across the tender scars that adorned the inside of his pale forearm. “And I like your mind.” Jimmy's eyes flicked up at Thomas through the messy fringe that curtained his brow as he carefully kissed his way down the length of Thomas's disfigured arm, and then all the way back up again. “And I ain't goin'. Not ever again.”

At last, Thomas managed to meet Jimmy's gaze, his breath hitching in his throat when he found the blond looking at him as if he couldn't bear to lose him. “I were miserable without you, Thomas,” Jimmy said as his lips crested the top of Thomas's knuckles once more, his eyes never wavering from the dark-haired underbutler, who was suddenly struck with the realization that Jimmy had been looking at him like that for longer than he could even remember – a look he'd seen a hundred times without realizing it was something that Jimmy saved only for him. A love that had been waiting for him for years, quietly blooming right in front of him.

“Sometimes it takes time to get a sense for what matters,” Jimmy was saying, his lips fluttering around a soft smile. “Sometimes you get scared to chase what you really want and that. Sometimes you end up pretendin' like it don't matter when, really, it's all you ever needed to get on.”

Thomas was pensive, now completely enraptured in every little detail of Jimmy's face, each quirk that carried a meaning he'd been too blind to ever see. Vaguely, a conversation he'd had with Anna right after Jimmy's departure clawed itself from the twisted recesses of his mind. He'd been so dejected in his abandonment that he had only the wherewithal to feel unimportant, even as Anna had pointedly observed,  _“I don't think that's true. I think he liked you.”_

In the end he begged but one simple question of Jimmy: “And what exactly is it that really matters to... to you, Jimmy?”

Jimmy's eyelashes fluttered low over his eyes as he bowed his head, his fringe shadowing his eyes as his smile slowly lifted itself higher beneath one rounded cheek. “It's strange you never knew,” he whispered almost to himself. Then he lifted his chin, and the moonlight waxed around his face like he'd just emerged from behind a heavy cloud, and, it was as though he was seeing Jimmy for the first time. He took his breath away.

Spreading the fingers of Thomas's left hand, Jimmy threaded his through Thomas's pale digits, his other palm rising against the high cut of Thomas's cheek with a trembling touch. Despite himself, Thomas leaned into the cup of Jimmy's hand, not daring to exhale lest the slightest wheeze send this new dream away on a quick breeze. But then Jimmy's plush lips were moving against his, and though they had kissed before, this one smoldered through him at a slow burn. It pushed air back into his suffocated lungs, made him feel like he was human again.

“I used to hate how much I loved you,” Jimmy murmured against Thomas's mouth, just as hesitant to break the moment. “I were so afraid of what it meant if I did. But I –”

“Jimmy,” Thomas interrupted, pulling back enough so that he could take in the whole of Jimmy's visage, which was still that same, tender one Thomas had just discovered mere moments before. It shot him to such great heights and dragged him down through the floor all at once. With a grimace, Thomas looked down at their tangled hands, still finding Jimmy's beautiful, talented hands a gross juxtaposition to his disgusting, violent ones, which only ever seemed capable of doing wrong. “You don't have to keep pretendin' to be what I want you to be,” Thomas said with wavering assertiveness as he tried to wrest his hand free of Jimmy's, though Jimmy's grip proved to be an unrelenting one. “Me heart's already been long broken, so it won't make a diff –“

“I lied to you, Thomas,” Jimmy cut in, forcing Thomas's words back down his throat, where they stuck. “It weren't right – 'cause you were always the secret I kept – but I love you. I love you – like never before, I love you.”

Thomas could have been knocked over with a feather at Jimmy's confession. He couldn't be certain he was hearing any of it correctly, even with the serious weight to Jimmy's stare. He distracted himself with the exposed turn of Jimmy's shoulders, where his collar hung loose, afraid of what he might find in Jimmy's expression if he studied it for too long. “You can't mean that,” he mumbled, remembering the night he'd clumsily admitted his feelings aloud to Jimmy, thinking it had been reciprocated only to find out that he had been horribly mistaken.

“Oh, but Thomas, I  _do_ ,” Jimmy emphasized, scooting close enough to Thomas that their knees bumped against one another on the bed. He used his free hand to caress Thomas's cheek again as he whispered, “I really, really do.”

Thomas could only blink at him, his breathless lungs buckled tight together once more.

Seeing that Thomas was not yet convinced, Jimmy said with a cheeky sort of boldness, “Come and kiss me if you don't believe me.” He wet his lips with an almost teasing swipe of his tongue. “I'll kiss you as many times as it takes.”

Shifting into a position that brought his face closer to Jimmy's, Thomas swallowed. He was near enough that he could smell the anise and spice that peppered Jimmy's brand of hair slick, the coriander that still lingered on his breath from dinner. “You won't... yell at me this time?” Thomas asked in a fit of nerves like he had never known.

The tips of their noses were just grazing one another, and Jimmy had his hand on Thomas's cheek yet again, guiding their mouths closer. “Alfred ain't walkin' in this time, is he?” was Jimmy's smooth reply as he captured Thomas's mouth yet again.

This time, Thomas's comfort with the intimacy grew steadier with each nip and nuzzle they made. He cradled Jimmy's face and reveled in the taste of him, the press of their tongues against one another and the quiet mewls that Jimmy made whenever Thomas inhaled. To Thomas, it was almost noxious how Jimmy trembled in his hands, and it wasn't long before he found himself exploring the planes of Jimmy's cheek with curious lips – lips that roamed around the square of his jaw and down the curve of his long neck, across the slope of his trapezius until he was met with the collar of Jimmy's union suit. He could hear Jimmy's dyspeptic breathing as he grazed the well-sculpted muscle with his teeth, tasting smooth flesh that became callused just beneath the cut of Jimmy's collar. He drew back in surprise to find that Jimmy's shoulder was webbed with scar tissue.

At Thomas's sudden hesitation, Jimmy fell back from the euphoric trance that had started to grip him at Thomas's decadant ministrations. “Caught a bullet at Artois,” he said with a shrug that contorted the hardened flesh. He undid a few more buttons on his union suit so that he could pull his arm out of the sleeve and show Thomas the extent of the damage. The scar drew a diagonal line from the cap of his deltoid and down across his bicep. “Only a flesh wound, really. Not quite enough to send me home – not like  _your_ blighty. But still enough to hurt somethin' fierce.” He was staring up at the ceiling absently as he spoke.

“Mine's not really worth braggin' about,” said Thomas, again pulled down to the sight of their conjoined hands. Jimmy still had not seen fit to let go, though Thomas's continued disgust with his own scars still left him wondering why.

“But it's still part of you,” Jimmy said, lifting Thomas's hand to kiss its disfigurements again. He lavished the exposed hole in the heel of Thomas's hand with the touch of his soft lips, and then moved to the exit wound in the middle of the palm; he kissed each and every healed laceration that crisscrossed Thomas's wrists a second and third time. “You don't know the greatness you are, bruises and all,” Jimmy said against the uneven skin.

“If bruises are any measure, then I must be  _magnificent_ ,” Thomas said drolly, lifting his chin to cast a heavy-lidded look down the side of his face. A very faint smirk teased his lips.

“Yeah. Certainly that,” agreed Jimmy without hesitation. He chewed his bottom lip wantonly, and then added, “Now kiss me again – and don't you dare fuckin' stop this time.”

He beckoned Thomas with a curl of his fingers and received Thomas's proximity with an arm around his middle. Thomas allowed himself to settle in the loop of Jimmy's arm, his eyes roving the exposed shape of Jimmy's beautiful shoulder and the rosy nipple that his half-shed undergarment revealed. He bent close, his lips grazing Jimmy's scar as he cautiously wondered, “Tell me true, Jimmy, if... if Alfred hadn't come in that night, would you've let me kiss you?”

The arm wrapped around Thomas's torso tightened, pressing their bodies closer together – close enough that Thomas could feel the peak of Jimmy's nipple and the chisel of his musculature through the silk of his own pajamas. “Oh, Thomas,” Jimmy whispered thickly into Thomas's ear; “I'd've let you do a whole lot more than just  _kiss_ me.”

The words shot through Thomas like an aphrodisiac. At once, he had the taste of Jimmy's skin on his tongue again, tracing the outline of Jimmy's scar, and then the contour of his pectorial. He caught the hardened nub of Jimmy's exposed nipple between his teeth and suckled it, his hands jerking at Jimmy's union suit with enough force to make its seams pull loudly at the strain. Jimmy groaned and clawed helplessly at Thomas's pajamas, just as eager to disrobe Thomas as Thomas was him.

Before long, Thomas was lying on his back, his blue striped pajamas hanging open as Jimmy lay atop him, his union suit pulled far enough down his body that it was bunched just below his hipbones, a dangerous tease for Thomas as they continued to kiss. Thomas's left hand was still pinned in Jimmy's unrelenting grasp, but his right one wandered the length of Jimmy's spine with feather-light touches, fingertips reveling in the flex of Jimmy's back as they danced across the powerful muscles. They slid low, across the dip above Jimmy's buttocks, and pressed Jimmy's nether region flush against his own, the thin fabrics that separated them not nearly enough to mask the lust that had manifested between them. Thomas hissed as he rolled his hips up against Jimmy's, and Jimmy closed his eyes, panting as he reveled in the pleasure the nearness of Thomas's body instilled within him.

“It's really alright?” Thomas begged to know as he started pushing at the roll of fabric wound around Jimmy's middle.

“I think you know me well enough to tell if it weren't,” Jimmy whispered huskily, already wriggling like he meant to shake the garment the rest of the way down his legs. “You're everythin' I ever wanted – everythin' I ever  _needed_ , Thomas.”

Suddenly, Thomas flipped Jimmy onto his back, a jerky maneuver in such close quarters, and then slid down the length of the cot to crouch at Jimmy's feet as he grasped the ankles of Jimmy's union suit and gave it an impatient tug. He reeled the undergarment around his wrists as he pulled it free of Jimmy's legs, loving the helpless way the blond was jerked this way and that as he did so.

But as he slipped the last inch of it over Jimmy's foot, Thomas's breath hitched as he found himself drinking in the picture of Jimmy's nudity – the beauty of his form and the rawness of his sexuality, which lay hardened against his abdomen and crowned with a pearlescent bead of cum at its tip. It was almost too much to believe that such a creature could belong to him as he shrugged out of his pajama top and fell onto all fours above Jimmy's cock. He licked his lips and bent forward to taste.

Jimmy snatched Thomas's hand up again and clutched it tightly, the fingers of his other hand woven through Thomas's black hair as he pressed Thomas between his thighs. He grunted with pleasure and arched off the bed, thrusting up into Thomas's mouth with repeated eagerness. He purred Thomas's name; he told God again and again how much he loved him.

Thomas brought Jimmy to completion quickly, the culmination of Jimmy's passion salting his lips. Jimmy coaxed Thomas up the length of his body so that he might have another kiss, mindless of how sticky it would be, and Thomas melted into him as if they had already become one. Jimmy pawed at the waistband of Thomas's pajama bottoms, whimpering after things that escaped articulation.  

“It's just like heaven,” Thomas told him as he touched their foreheads together. “Just like a dream.”

With a devilish grin, Jimmy simply leaned up to kiss him again, and Thomas shuddered as he felt the roughness of Jimmy's palm against his own burgeoning need. He wanted to be naked in Jimmy's arms, to be as close to him as possible – to express to him all the emotions he was poor at explaining with his voice. Jimmy welcomed his touch, encouraging the progression of their intimacy with a guiding hand and a commanding tone, to which Thomas was a hopeless slave.

“Hold my hand,” Jimmy said to Thomas just as they were about to pass the final threshold in their lovemaking, even though Jimmy hadn't let go of of Thomas's blighty for hardly a single instant throughout the duration. Positioned to give Jimmy the whole of his love, Thomas tightened the lace of their entwined fingers, and then filled Jimmy completely. Jimmy rolled his head back, his neck curving over the lump of pillows that cushioned him as a long, euphoric moan floated through his lips.

Seated within Jimmy, Thomas gasped as though Jimmy had become the very ether that he breathed. It was nothing like the wild, sexual escapades he'd once shared with Philip, which had been a constant war for dominance, and far more vibrant than the one kiss he'd ever managed to give Edward – a chaste touch of the lips to his cold forehead after he and Lady Sybil had dressed him for the ground. Rather, loving Jimmy granted Thomas a sort of inner peace, a death to the isolation that had plagued him all his life. Falling in with Jimmy had found him someone close enough to see the inner mechanics of his tinkered heart – someone who was also made of _stars_.

An uncontrollable thrill shot through Thomas's entire body as he neared his climax. “I'm yours, Jimmy,” he panted as they rocked against one another; “Yours, yours, yours!“ He lurched forward –

– and hurtled awake with jerking elbows and knees. He blinked dazedly about, still lost in the euphoria of making love to Jimmy, soon registering the fact that he was clad in his striped pajamas again, and that Jimmy was kneeling on the floor beside his bed, holding his hand. Disappointment impressed itself upon Thomas as he looked down at the blond, who sat in his drooping union suit while wearing a crown of starlight and a moonlit smile. Thomas murmured softly, “You're there.”

“Where else would I be?” Jimmy asked, stroking the exposed scars that cuffed Thomas's blighty.

“I don't know,” Thomas said, his respiration fluttering at the touch of Jimmy's fingertips against the tender flesh. Mirroring his fantasy with his reality, Thomas felt disgusting in Jimmy's presence. It was almost worse than the dreams in which he was dying. He sighed, adding, “Somewhere better than here, I s'pose.”  

“Ain't no such place,” Jimmy rejoined, shuffling into a position that allowed him to bend his elbows into the blankets crumbled at Thomas's side. The unbuttoned collar of his union suit drooped over one shoulder, allowing Thomas a peek at a hidden web of scar tissue adoring the curve of Jimmy's shoulder. Glimpsing it made Thomas's throat constrict such that he almost couldn't speak after Jimmy said, “I told you, Thomas: I'm here for you – any way you need me, I'm here.”

Though Thomas knew that Jimmy meant only well for him, hearing such things from Jimmy only made Thomas wish more profoundly that he knew what Jimmy was looking for – what Jimmy  _wanted_ from him.

“Were it another bad dream?” Jimmy asked softly, noting the way Thomas seemed to have floated away. He tugged gently on Thomas's hand until Thomas came back to him and met his eyes again.

A picture of Jimmy in orgasmic euphoria revisited Thomas, a reminder which made each thump of his heart sound empty when he thought about how much he wished to they could be that close to one another. Heavily, Thomas nodded in the affirmative, though his mind was caught up with frustration that he couldn't quash his affection for Jimmy no matter how many times he tried to fall apart and start again.

“D'ya... wanna talk about it?” Jimmy wondered tentatively, his fingers closing more stalwartly around Thomas's hand. “I mean, only if you want to,” he amended as he gave Thomas's hand a reassuring shake.

“It's stupid,” said Thomas, unable to keep himself from thinking about how angelic Jimmy looked in the stellar glow – the way his eyes glistened like they were a pair of twin stars. He tore himself away from their mesmerizing shape, though they still had a hold on him even as he stared down at their knotted hands.

“Tell me,” Jimmy pressed earnestly, leaning into Thomas's field of vision. “I won't think it's stupid, I promise.”

Considering everything he and Jimmy had been through together, Thomas supposed that the truth of it wouldn't come as any particular surprise to Jimmy, even if it wasn't anything that would matter in the end. Succinctly, he glossed over the details and said plainly: “I dreamed you loved me.”

“Oh, but Thomas,” Jimmy's voice wafted as though it had been borne on a surrealistic pillow from far, far away; “Thomas, I  _do_ love you. I love you very, very much.”

Thomas drew in a sharp breath, suddenly pinned by the brightness banding through Jimmy's eyes. Jimmy's brow was knit, his expression a mirror of the way he'd looked at Thomas that chilly morning he'd last said goodbye, and for the first time, Thomas understood all the things that Jimmy had been trying to say with words that didn't fully encapsulate what he meant.

Still, Thomas's penchant for negativity left him hesitant to believe that it meant what it sounded like. Despondently, he tried to pull his hand back, though Jimmy refused to let go. He felt brittle, like even a sneeze from Jimmy would make him crumble, and he sighed, “Please – you don't have to say that sort of stuff just 'cause you think it's what'll make me feel better. Truthfully, it only makes me feel worse. Me mind's far too old for that sort of thing.”

Jimmy clicked his tongue and scoffed. The cot creaked as he clambered up onto the mattress beside Thomas so that he could stare straight into Thomas's soul, arresting him with the astral glimmer that rimmed his irises. “Our life together is so precious to me,” said Jimmy with a weight of sincerity to his tone. “'Cause you were there and I were fortunate, Thomas.”

Then Jimmy leaned close, his hold on Thomas's wounded hand not once wavering as he burrowed his nose into the crook of Thomas's neck and wrapped his free arm around Thomas's torso. For every hollow pulsation Thomas felt in his own chest, there was an electric one buzzing within Jimmy's –  a kickstarter to motor his broken heart. As it started to whir back on, pumping warmth back through Thomas's numb veins, it suddenly struck Thomas how his bond with Jimmy transcended the traditional confines of what love was supposed to be. Their intimacy burned on dual planes, growing little by little with physical gestures, while also blooming with the strength of their shared affection for one another. Jimmy might still have needed some time to gestate, but it didn't stop him from being the special someone just for Thomas – the one who fit in with him like a missing linchpin.  

“You make me feel strong as I feel,” said Thomas, who didn't think that words could properly describe how overpowered with emotion he suddenly found himself, especially with the fluff of Jimmy's hair curling against his chin as he carefully placed his arms around him. “And I wish you knew what it means to me to be with you, alone.”

“Well, when we close the door, no one's gotta know how we are',” said Jimmy, pushing against Thomas in an effort to guide him onto his back once more. He laid down with the dark-haired underbutler and squeezed his head onto Thomas's pillow. “So I'll stay with you,” he added as he snuggled against Thomas's side, tightly holding his hand.

Jimmy held Thomas's hand.  


End file.
